I wrote yesterday about the intense focus that is placed on us as individuals. We surrender real life to pursue hollow activities that reflect life. We believe we’re connected because we’re current and hip and in-the-know, but we’re also rushed and harried and worried and incomplete. We squeeze little moments of joy into lives filled with obligations to beeps and clicks and bells and flashes. We think we’re succeeding when all we’ve done is bought-in. I know you think about this but it’s time to do some real meditation. Don’t just ponder the thought, bitch about it and move on. Actually ask what changes you could make that would impact your life in a positive way. Just that one simple, sincere meditation would easily expose that you do tons of things that have little reward and a much bigger price than you’ve ever really calculated. There’s some great advice in here. Squeeze a bit of it into your day:

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Yesterday I also talked a bit about how advertising infects our idea of what our lives should look like. Rather than looking for overall value and enjoyment of our experiences, we instead look for a list of things or places or activities which we can check off as having belonged to us. I find this one of the most obvious and yet unnoticed aspects to human ego: a huge percentage of our lives are dictated by beliefs we have which were formed by people whose motivation was to make money, not make our lives better. Much like people who make military hardware, advertisers are putting considerable human capability into making the world worse. These are smart and capable people. Can you imagine what the world might look like if we had everyone oriented toward making a better world rather than a more profitable one? Jerry Seinfeld does a great job of illustrating this point with his Clio acceptance speech. It’s as enlightening as it is enjoyable:

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Russell Brand is a star because he’s talented and because his originality plays well in public. He’s a guy who’s worn dresses and challenged some pretty basic ideas about life. Like Louis CK or George Carlin or even Jon Stewart, he’s a comedian who’s more a philosopher at heart. Like Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Borat, Brand exists to draw attention to the inconsistencies in our belief systems. He challenges our values and suggests another path. The establishment see him as entertainment or even craziness. But if you listen closely, he makes way way way more sense than any advertiser ever has. The fact that most of us are more comfortable with the advertising than the originality of Brand is a sign of how brainwashed we’ve all become. Almost everything he’s saying has already been scientifically proven to be true. So why does it sound so strange? That’s a question worth asking yourself:

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Spend more time with your friends. Spend less of your time focusing on products and services. And engage yourself with your own spiritual sense. Do that and your life will improve, guaranteed.

peace. s

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The Friday Dose is a collection of cool, interesting and surprising things that are chosen for their potential to distract you away from any painful thought loops that may currently be disrupting your sense of perspective. Focus on these and change your mind. Enjoy.

Following a serious childhood brain injury Scott McPherson unwittingly spent his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and the self. This made him as strange to others as they were to him. Seeing the self-harm people created with their own overthinking, Scott dedicated part of his life to helping others live with greater awareness. He is currently a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB, where he finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.